1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a verification apparatus, verification method, verification system, and storage medium and, more particularly, to a verification apparatus, verification method, verification system, and storage medium, which are suitable when verification is necessary for the purpose of copyright protection associated with individual objects of a moving image to be played back.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a conventional digital video data transmission/reception system. As shown in FIG. 1, a digital video data distribution server 10 downloads digital video data recorded in a digital video data storage device 12 such as a hard disk annexed to the distribution server 10 to a digital video data reception client 20 through a network 30 such as the Internet in response to a request from the reception client 20. The distribution server 10 has a conversion section 11 for coding digital video data. Digital video data is coded by the conversion section 11 to decrease the data amount, and distributed to the reception client 20 in accordance with a procedure such as the TCP/IP protocol. The reception client 20 has a conversion section 21 for decoding digital video data. A received digital video signal is played back by the conversion section 21 and displayed, recorded, or edited.
An example of a system which constructs one moving image scene from a plurality of objects, codes and compresses each object by the conversion section 11 of the distribution server 10, transfers the objects to the reception client 20, and decodes and reconstructs the objects in the reception client 20 to play back the moving image scene is an MPEG-4 player.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a conventional MPEG-4 player. FIG. 2 is based on “ISO/IEC FCD 14496-1 FIG. 1–1”, and this has been described in detail in “ISO/IEC FCD 14496-1”. Only a schematic arrangement will be described below.
An MPEG-4 bit stream transmitted through a network or the like or MPEG-4 bit stream read out from a storage medium such as a DVD-RAM is received by “TransMux Layer” in accordance with a procedure corresponding to transmission/read (session establishment) and separated into streams such as scene description information, object data, and object description data, decoded, and played back by a “FlexMux” section. On the basis of the scene description information, a scene is played back or graphically processed.
FIG. 3 is a schematic and simple block diagram of the player shown in FIG. 2. When verification is necessary for the purpose of copyright protection for individual objects, a bit stream containing a plurality of object data including the scene description information may contain “IP Data Set” (copyright information group).
However, even if the transmission bit stream contains “IP Data Set” (copyright information group), and “IP Data” is played back by “Object Descriptors” of the system shown in FIG. 2 or 3, “IP Data” is not processed in image playback processing. For this reason, “IP Protection” (copyright protection) processing is not executed.
In the system shown in FIG. 2 or 3, even when an “IP Data Set” (copyright information group) stream is contained in addition to the transmission bit stream, “IP Data” is not always played back by “Object Descriptors”. Even if “IP Data” is played back by “Object Descriptors”, “IP Data” is not processed in image playback processing. For this reason, “IP Protection” (copyright protection) processing is not executed.
In this case, an application can receive decoded “IP Data Set” and execute “IP Protection” processing. However, this processing is unique to the application and is not always executed by another player or a player of another type.
In the system shown in FIG. 2 or 3, an image is played back after verification processing is performed for individual objects. For this reason, when new objects appear one after another in playing back a moving image scene, production must be temporarily stopped to require verification.
When verification is performed without stopping playback, images to be played back are omitted corresponding to the time required for verification.